Seeking Surrender: How My Friendship With a Trappist Monk Taught Me to Trust and Embrace Life by Colette Lafia is an honest, intimate description of spiritual formation.
We are shaped by how we reflect on and come to terms with our experiences. Spiritual life is sparked and stretched by challenges we face, disappointments and discouragements we feel, people we know, along with our own thinking and many other things.
In Seeking Surrender, Colette Lafia tells her own story.
Colette’s story grows out of who she is. She begins by describing the experiences that brought her and her husband to the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery in rural Kentucky, in the summer of 2002. Neither of them knew much about monastic life, monks, or the writings of Gethsemani’s most well known monk, Thomas Merton. Based on the recommendation of a friend, they made plans to visit the monastery for a week.
I held on to the belief that life had more to offer me than disappointment, sadness, and fatigue.
On their first day, Colette met Brother René.
Seeking Surrender remembers that initial meeting, and Colette’s friendship with Brother René which developed into a correspondence. Over time, she reflects on the various struggles which brought her and her husband to Gethsemane. Colette describes lessons she has learned, spiritual practices she has found and developed, gifts she has received. She includes her letters to Brother René and his to her, along with practical suggestions about how her readers might put lessons into practice for themselves.
Find a place to sit quietly: in your car, on a chair at home, or on a park bench. Now, breathe in and out. Pay attention to your breath, and begin to scan your body.
I enjoyed reading Seeking Surrender. It is a calm and refreshing book. Colette tells her story in a way which invites her reader to participate in her process of insightful growth. She is clear and direct without being harsh or directive.
Seeking Surrender is a story told with authenticity and vulnerability, the story of a friendship which brought out deep truths in the friends who shared it. It is also a collection of helpful, meaningful suggestions for people seeking their spiritual path.
Colette’s story helped me remember the story of my own spiritual journey, and the valuable lessons of surrender.
(adapted from a review published in Spiritual Directors International’s Presence)
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